I asked some of my crafty neighbors if they had any ideas, but their suggestions were far too complicated. The actual process of making the tuning slide was not difficult, but coming up with the design took some effort.
It has a range of E4-C#6, not counting higher notes achievable through over-blowing. This particular slide whistle worked well because of the L-shaped slide. So I could either practice the slide whistle until I become so familiar with it that I can navigate the intervals by feel alone, or construct some sort of tuning gauge. The slide whistle is typically used as a non-pitched glissando sound effect, but Ligeti writes specific pitches in moving lines, and if that wasn’t enough, he also has the two slide whistlers in parallel fourths. Given that it is written for slide whistle, I seriously doubt the intention is for it to be perfectly in tune, but I at least want to be in the right ball park. At the first rehearsal, the conductor made me play the part with in unison with the violins, so in that case the practice paid off. I practiced flexatone for three hours to learn the feel of where the pitches were. But I remembered an experience I had 10 years ago playing Steve Mackey’s Eating Greens, which involves a comparably fussy part for tuned flexatone. While spending an inordinate amount of time modifying a slide whistle, I often wondered “Does it really matter if these notes are in tune?” It would make my life a lot easier if it didn’t. All of that makes a few slide whistle notes being sort of in tune a relatively insignificant detail, yet several man hours went in to that task alone. Aside from the musicians, there is also the administrative side of BMOP, raising the money to produce the event and handling all the logistics. I also have tons of hard cimbalom notes to play. Even for me, the slide whistle part isn’t on my top 5 list of concerns. Dozens of musicians will play hundreds of thousands of notes during this concert. In addition to the finer points of tuned slide whistle, this article might also help to illustrate the sheer amount of collective effort it takes to put on an event like this. The percussion part includes difficult passages for two tuned slide whistles. This week I’m performing Ligeti’s Violin Concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.